"Like it or not, if speculators don't get behind a TLD or subdomain, that TLD/subdomain will fail financially."

that's right. but there is far more to "speculation" than just flipping domain names...now if only we can explain this concept to ICANN though their answer is sure to be something to the effect of not wanting to compromise stability for reasons of speculation - kind of ironic in a way since a TLD is sure to "fail financially" without speculation...that's a tough one to reconcile :)